Testing, Testing 1-2-3

Remember Nicholas? He’s learning game design with instructor Mike M. as part of Game-U’s Accelerate program. Today, Nicholas has a big announcement to make. He finished his Project Spark game!

From its lowly beginnings as a simple 3D platformer, where the Flynn Rider-lookalike player hopped from planking to planking, Nicholas’ game has bloomed into a full-blown level with a custom Boss enemy, a detailed environment, multiple checkpoints, some power-ups, a limited lives system, a bunch of low-level enemies, and a challenging game path! Nicholas, thorough and attentive as ever, spent most of today’s lesson polishing up the game. For the dragon (A.K.A. the Boss enemy), he deleted the default “Brain” – the Kode that controls its actions – and coded a new one from scratch, so it behaves exactly like the Boss he envisioned. Nicholas also dug into the dragon’s settings to repaint it in the dangerous colors of black and red. Next, Nicholas explored Project Spark’s world settings to ensure the color grading, time of day, and other general environment details were to his satisfaction. Finally, he spent some time tweaking nitty-gritty mechanics until the game was perfect. Finishing a game is all about testing, testing, testing! Nicholas invested so much effort into this game that it’ll be hard for him to let it go. But he’s too talented to resist a new challenge, and Mike M. certainly has one in store for him.

Thanks for sharing your finished game with us, Nicholas! It’s been pretty cool watching you build it up from scratch. You’ve definitely impressed your instructor – and us – with your abilities, so stay in touch. We want to hear all about your next project!